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description by Shen Kuo

...bitan (“Brush Talks from Dream Brook” [Dream Brook was the name of his estate in Jingkou]) contains the first reference to the magnetic compass, the first description of
movable type, and a fairly accurate explanation of the origin of fossils. The
Mengxi bitan also contains Shen’s observations on such varied subjects as mathematics,...

invention

The Song was another dynasty of cultural brilliance. Landscape painting approached perfection, and cultural achievement was stimulated by the invention of
movable type (first made of earthenware, then of wood and metal). This advance from the older method of block printing led to the multiplication of books; the printing of a complete set of the classics was a boon to literary studies in...

printing

Even more significant than the invention of the mechanical clock was the 15th-century invention of printing with movable metal type. The details of this epochal invention are disappointingly obscure, but there is general agreement that the first large-scale printing workshop was that established at Mainz by Johannes Gutenberg, which was producing a sufficient quantity of accurate type to print...